In hiberna noctum

This evening, I revisited a piece of music that was a constant companion of mine last winter. It rang out in my little hostel room, its re-run frequency reaching its peak around 5:30- 6:30 in the evening, as the season leached sunlight from the day. It’s not the most cheerful thing to listen to when you’re getting used to seasonal shifts, or in a constantly weepy mood, or living in a chilly hostel room with the threat of exams hanging over your head. But it’s beautiful and mysterious, and is so perfectly ‘Potter’ for those very reasons.

If there’s one thing the Harry Potter movies did well, it was the music. You can almost hear the growing darkness as you progress musically through the series- from the soaring and magical ‘Hedwig’s Theme’ that forms the backbone of the soundtrack for the first two movies, to the bittersweet air of ‘Lily’s theme’ that riddles the second half of the seventh. As Harry grows older, the music ages with him, highlighting the increasingly personal nature of his fight against the Dark.

‘In Noctem’ was originally part of the movie- sung by the Hogwarts choir in a deleted scene. As clouds gather and ominous thunder rattles the windows of the castle, the various residents hold their breath, waiting for something momentous to happen. That something momentous turns out to be the attack on the school, orchestrated by Draco Malfoy (whose role in the book made me believe that he would turn out to be an important character in ‘DH’. Alas, I was wrong). This is the invasion that results in the death of Dumbledore, an event which explains the lyrics of the song (‘Tell the ones, the ones I love, I never will forget’) and the final farewell they imply.

I think ‘In Noctem’ fits in wonderfully with the overall darker, more mature tone of ‘Half Blood Prince’ (the movie, the book read like a typical high school romance in parts). It’s a shame they cut this scene out, it would have been good payoff for all the stalking we’d done of Malfoy. Not to mention it would have finally shown him in the decisive moment of swinging his feet off his bed and walking into the war.

Of course, one could argue that Malfoy started this journey when he took the Mark. But when we see him in the first few scenes of the movie (and the first chapters of the book), he still comes across as a schoolyard braggart, a kid in over his head and not realizing it, more taken with the glamour of being part of something that his idolized father belongs to than understanding what exactly that movement stands for, or the sacrifices it will demand of him. Over the year, he comes to realize the seriousness of Voldemort’s threats and the importance of the success of his mission. At the end, he is as adult as he will ever be in the pages of the Potter books- he makes a decision and then lives to regret the consequences.

I loved the development of Malfoy’s character in ‘HBP’, and I think Tom Felton did a great job translating his struggle in the movie. I rather wish Rowling had continued to give him some amount of attention in ‘DH’- the omission of Draco character building was one of the major problems I had with the book. It is as though he is fated, like the rest of his Slytherin housemates, to pass unlamented in noctum, to stage their struggles and transitions to adulthood off-screen, or on the director’s floor with the other deleted, shorn bits of the films.